As if a door of memory opened in front of them, everyone saw what Marai had seen when he touched the flower of life earlier. They could not see the buildings or each other, but they all saw the lights emanating from the pattern where they were. They saw an enormous red-skinned god in the distance, and watched as he shaped the lands around him. They heard the adulating cries of thousands, but could not make out the words they spoke. The cries faded as the shape of the god shrank to Marai’s size. Silence surrounded him – he had been forgotten. Though he still looked vital, he seemed hollow to all of them, as if the feats they had seen only moments before were now beyond his abilities. He looked up from the center of the pattern where they now stood, an indescribable tiredness in his eyes. He held his hand aloft as the pattern around them glowed in three rings just the way it had appeared in Marai’s vision. They also all saw the image of Deka in the distance. Her belly was swollen and she had difficulty moving, but she still fought and screamed to get to the place where the man stood. She leapt and tried to rise into the air, but her ability to spin magnificent black wings from her long skirts had failed her. She couldn’t fly. She struggled towards the red-skinned god, but before she could reach him, a disk shape opened in the sky above him. A great, fiery column of light shot down and took the god up into the sky, blasting great clouds of red and black dust out and across the empty fields around it. Deka jumped after the magnificent column of light as it retracted into the disk in the sky, but she missed it. The sky closed once more as Deka fell to earth.
As the vision ended and everyone could see the tiny ship and the buildings around them once more, Marai felt Naibe begin to whine in distress. She tensed up and her body rose to the woven straw ceiling of the awning as she struggled and fought. Djerah grabbed at her, but one hand remained glued to where the wdjat had been. A multi-colored spark now occupied the space at his fingertips, but he was not the creator of the spark. The spark blasted an arc of energy through everyone in the circle. He glanced at Marai once more, helpless, then at Naibe’s tormented form.
“I see it; I see it… I don’t want to see. I don’t want to!” Naibe squalled like a child.
Xania and the maidservant struggled, trying to scramble away from the circle, but the energy from the spark pinned them in place. They could do nothing but watch the woman rise away.
“No!” Marai roared. “You let go of her.” he powered past the energy and grabbed Naibe, holding onto her with all his might.
A voice, not unlike his own voice, sounded in everyone’s heads.
You cannot hide from destiny
You wish to warn me
But I warn you!
I have been watching
All along
Counting your steps to me
Waiting for my taste
I have hungered too long…
Marai struggled with the unseen force, barely noticing someone push in to grab Naibe by both shoulders. “Ari… No!” he thought he would have to rescue two women. “Stay back!"
“You leave her alone! You go back to Sheol empty handed, you bastard. She doesn’t belong to you.” The woman beside him snarled and tugged Naibe harder.
Loud and powerful laughter rippled overhead and then through the circle and the pull began to suck the young woman through the straw ceiling. As if magically energized, the image of the tiny ship emitted a burst of light that passed through everyone in the circle. The ship transformed back into the wdjat with twelve stones. They stopped shimmering and drifted down to the floor.
Everyone was free. Djerah fell backward gasping for breath, Xania and her maidservant instantly scrambled back towards the bathing pools in terror, Akaru jumped up and quickly followed to calm them, and Ariennu pushed Naibe into Marai’s arms.
Snatching up the stones and shoving them and the wdjat into the leather bag, Ari drew the bag shut and handed it to Marai. “There. Enough of that tonight,” her shoulders twitched and shrugged nervously. She shut her eyes in relief and bowed her head.
Marai silently bundled snuffling Naibe in his arms, went to his haunches, rose up, and took her out to the center of the flower pattern in the plaza.
The moon had set. Lamps sputtered around the plaza but now the air felt oddly clean and empty.
“Why didn’t somebody tell me?” Djerah panted and sat up.
“I did, and it just took all the stones we have here to clean up your mess! Now you sit with your deed,” Marai roared, bull-like. He turned his gaze to Naibe but felt his own arms still knotting in resistance even though he tried to make them gentle for her.
“Naibe. I’ve got you. It’s over. It’s gone,” he assured her, but something still nagged at him. Whatever had been lurking, deity or not, had posed as one and it had flexed its spiritual muscle more powerfully than it had in years…
“I saw. I saw…” She buried her head in his arm. “The baby. Our baby,” she whimpered.
“Oh, that thing did not…” Marai’s voice trailed. His silver head swung around as he walked four of the directions in the pattern with her in his arms, scanning for any residual energy. There was none.
Fighting down his rising panic by focusing on the young woman in his arms, he sent her images of security and comfort.
“You have to protect yourself, pretty Brown Eyes,” he whispered into her blue-black hair. “For the little one and for me. You know after the misery I kept inside myself for so long and how it would kill me…” he started, not wanting to think of his first wife Ilara, pale, shuddering, and heavy-lidded, bleeding out in his arms while he sobbed like a child. He didn’t want to see her face cast over Naibe’s face.
“No, my love. It’s not like that,” Naibe shook her head. Her soft words invaded and lulled him as always. “No one understands. It wasn’t about me or our little Asar growing inside me.”
“You sure?” he asked, shooting a look back at Akaru who had succeeded in getting his wife and her servant to light the sweet grass and start walking it around the plaza to drive off the evil. On Marai’s glance, the old man came to them.
“I am. Now put me down. I’m over the fright and so is he. I only hurt because even he… the little one knew the horror I witnessed and seized up in my belly.” She stretched her legs out and Marai let her down, still guarding her closely.
“I sense he is well, and he will survive to become a wonder, your child. Already he shows signs of it,” Akaru approached Marai and Naibe. The elder continued: “With the two of you as parents, he will be gifted, already a young god. The chore would be to give such a little one a life as a normal child so he would learn as a child. It was the task given the man and woman who raised me.”
Marai took a step back, shook his head, and leered in odd mirth. He still paced the plaza, wanting to find the entity so he could give it a spiritual punching.
“Of all the… here, we just had the liver scared out of us and all he can say is our little one will be a god? Wonderful.”
“The danger has left us,” the elder calmly explained, as if his earlier agitation had never existed. “Do you not understand the wisdom we gained this night? You asked me to endure, I now ask it of you. Come in from the night air. We should all rest,” the Akaru led them back to the others, and then led everyone to re-settle in the sleeping area. Xania and her servant went to fetch them some food and drink after setting aside the smoldering bundles of sweet grass.
“The Akaru is right, Marai. I’m sorry I pushed you to allow this,” Naibe lay her head on Marai’s shoulder once everyone re-settled. “I didn’t know who the voice was. I thought it was Deka at first because long ago she stored her secrets in my heart. She did it so she wouldn’t have to think about them. It felt a bit like her. I didn’t understand much in those days, so I didn’t know the pain and horror tied to them. When I was renewed I discovered how bad things were for her. I try not to think of them, but when that voice tried to take me I saw one of her secrets. I saw her child being taken from her. I knew even as I saw it that it wasn’t our lit
tle Asar, so I shouldn’t have been so upset.” Naibe kissed Marai’s hand, noticing how it trembled as it touched her face. “Aww. My love,” she assured him. I love you, Marai, my sweet, her thoughts whispered. You fill all of me so completely with your love; every bit.
Then, before the pleasure took her breath away, which he knew it could, she spoke again: “Tonight, I realized how much Deka was like me. She was going to have a baby when she went into the storm. She tried to come up that column of light and go after the one who abandoned her, but fell to earth,” her voice faded. “There was no one to help her. This god abandoned her. I keep hearing her screaming for him.” Naibe put both of her hands at her temples as if she wanted to clear her thoughts. “She became very frightened then, frightened that he had rejected her and would come back to take her child – so she became something else to hide him. She fell to a hunter in that form, then some cruel magic brought her back as she was when I met her. Her child was gone by then.”
Now Akaru Sef, as if a mystical light illuminated him, sat across from them. He looked saddened and struck by final self-realization.
For a long time, no one in their loose circle spoke. Marai knew and sensed through the linking of his own thoughts with others that clarity had finally come to all. He already knew and had even joked about the Shu alliance and the elder’s divine ancestry. Akaru had implied Deka was his sister when he implored her to ‘tell our Father…’ not to send the storm. He had spun the fable from the village that he had been born of a lioness who had vanished in the wild. Marai knew without being told that the Akaru had changed shape more than once and had either led a lion or become one.
It’s more than that, isn’t it? the sojourner asked himself, pitying. She’s the lioness who bore you. She’s your sister. She’s also your lost mother. Marai knew his revelation was shared. Again, there’s that desperate attempt to purify the blood by lying with one’s own child. Now the Kemet kings “claim” to wife their own kin, in imitation, but most know better as we in the wilderness do. I suspected it just as much as Akaru, but we were dancing all around such an inconvenient truth. Marai shook his head, not certain of what he would say next.
The Akaru rolled his eyes, understanding that everyone in the room waited for his reaction.
“You see…” he gave an almost comical salute to Naibe. “This is why you heard me cry out when you went a-walking.” He sipped some beer that Xania’s maid had brought. “And this is why I cannot be a leader of warriors and allow my people to properly avenge their dead. To join her in the destruction she feels growing in her heart would cause her to crave it even more. We are part of each other and I must be the opposite of her rage. It would solve nothing for us to join forces. It would devastate the earth.” He beckoned for Xania to sit.
As soon as she did, Akaru wrapped one affectionate arm around her. “And yes, I do have his rage in my blood…” his voice then sounded eerily calm and disquieting. “And hers. If you have not felt it from me already, you will.”
“Ta-Te in his rage. That’s who the voice was, wasn’t it? Your demon father…” Marai remembered the way the old man’s voice shook when he called for peace and diplomacy. He understood that all Akaru had to do was raise his fingers into the air in the same gesture that had summoned wind when he had shown everyone in his observatory his small magic. That sign would have brought down a bloodbath so complete that no one perhaps not even he, himself would have survived.
“Legacy…” the elder began again. “Is such a strange creature. And now I see it begets future events.” He looked down again, almost shyly.
Marai sensed he wanted to say a thousand things, but couldn’t.
Akaru spoke again, in a dismissal: “It’s late. I’m an old man shocked by surprises. I think it’s why we should all try to sleep now.” he looked around then seeming to ignore the surprised glances from everyone else began to get to his feet. Xania and her servant helped him, without questioning him.
Shutting this down? Because there’s more but you’re not sure of telling us? Or did the ghost of your demon of a father just shut you up… Marai frowned, reflecting everyone else’s dismay. They were tired but knew sleep wasn’t going to be easy to come by after everything they had learned.
“Sleep. After this and with this Yah stone now chattering in me and knowing what I saw in the crystal with the travelers? I doubt I will sleep for some time. Maybe I should just go walk around… maybe ‘til dawn… three days from now.” Djerah coughed and shook his head in disbelief.
He looked as if he wanted to get up, but Akaru signaled Marai, then spoke as he was led away by Xania
“And by the way, I know that boy camped in the grass, Marai bin Ahu. I know the young prince all too well. We can’t touch him, you know. He is now a part of this as much as I am… through her. They must come here because now he’s on fire with the magic just as much as she is. We must contain them. And something else too – I was right as a child and right again as a man. The veil is thin between the place of the gods and the place of men now, just as it was long ago. What that means… who can say” the elder shrugged and moved with Xania out of sight into his sleeping quarters.
Chapter 4: Destiny under the Canopy
It is the place of everyone who is there
Death...
When one goes astray...
When the death of a man comes near him
On the day of his transgression,
The summation of what he has done yesterday is made.
He will be buried as one who is despised,
In the city of the dead
The lock of hair (of mourning) is turned into something vile.
His rest will be a punishment of the god,
His wrongdoings will be made clear
And the misery.
Final passage of “Instructions of Hordjedtef” written to his only son Auibre on how to live a good life – The Wisdom Texts.
Hordjedtef read and re-read the scroll he had written to his son so long ago.
A lot has happened since that time, my dear Auibre; a lot. You were well enough, even healed and restless after the hunting accident that so grievously wounded you, but your inner workings had lost balance and then I lost you. You were still more a boy than a man when I wrote these words for you.
He rolled the hide scroll, inserted it into its storage tube, and then placed it in the chest by his chair. It would go with him when he sailed south to Nekhen in only a few more weeks’ time.
Today, he felt regret and disappointment closing in; tears of rage and sadness wanted to come. I must meditate on the course the great Djehut desires of me. Confusion is doing this to me. I must know right action before I fail and find misery overwhelming me. He thought of Auibre one last time as he sealed his writing.
Perhaps you were a sacrifice; a payment of a debt I owed. Perhaps it was that.
“It is the place of everyone who is there. Death...” he intoned aloud, sighed, then thought:
I know it. I know it, I do. I go away to die, but I can’t step down now that the day approaches. I am stronger than the cursed fate of ordinary men. Not for nothing have I lived my life along the border of right and wrong, of truth and falsehood where I may take a step to the right as often as to the left. Now those I have placed to succeed me when this old body fails have turned from what I hold to be the right path.
First, Auibre went into the reeds. Next young Maatkare Raemkai proved too ungovernable to rule as king. How can I step down now when even my chosen Wse has come to doubt my wisdom? It was written I would step down at the time of the king’s death if I still lived. How can I do it now?
The Great One of Five, as he was called, shook his bald head in further dismay and shaded his eyes from the encroaching sunlight.
I was an Uncle to you in truth, Menkaure KhaKhet and one in lineage as well. You know I always looked out for you and guided you. I eased your sorrow and pain, even to the day of your last sunrise, he lamented as if the spirit of the de
ad king hovered beside him to hear his thoughts. Now that you’re gone, all that I am is gone with you unless I can gather the remaining Ntr stones before your Shepseskaf rises with the sun of the new year. We both know he is not ready to rule this sacred land, nor will he ever be. I need to assure that the final hour of this frail body I wear around my heart does not arrive before that day so that I may effectively guide him.
The elder priest pushed hard against the sides of his wicker chair, annoyed by the creaking noise it made as he rose to his feet and shuffled toward his shaded temple area.
Lot of memories here. I’m not ready, no. If I could be certain the last of the stones would come to me, all would be complete and I wouldn’t need to. I must contact young Maatkare and let him know what has befallen the king. He still thirsts for what he stupidly squandered. Through him…
All ages will know you as wise, a voice spoke in his thoughts.
“Yes, they will, won’t they?” he answered aloud. “It was I who discovered the wise man Djedi, too; presented him to my father and then embarked on a life of knowledge when the double crown evaded me.” He shrugged, “what does it matter unless I am a god myself?”
“You are as a god,” the disembodied voice sounded deep and pleasant as it spoke.
For a moment, the elder thought he saw the figure of a half-giant man in plain sojourner clothing innocently studying the figures painted on the wall behind the altar.
Odd. That sojourner’s spirit has not shown itself to me in so many months. Why now? I will not have that unclean Akkad poking through into my world to toy with me. Hordjedtef’s hand raised again and his lips formed the start of the ‘dispel and control’ chant: “Een…”
Laughter filled his thoughts.
“Child. You truly do not know me? I can hear anything you have in your heart. Your innermost thoughts are common knowledge to me. Do you think a mere human utterance will contain me? Do you even know how you came by the words you wish to hurl at me in your defense?”
Heart of the Lotus Page 4